Run

“We’re completely below the empty slash,” Dee said.

They did forty up the road, Jack constantly looking back through the glassless hatch for anything in pursuit.

After four miles, the pavement went to gravel.

They came out of the canyon.

The road had been cut into a mountainside and the pines exchanged for hardier, more alpine-looking evergreens and aspen in full color. At 2:48 p.m., the engine sputtered, and at 2:49, on a level stretch of road on the side of a mountain, died.

They rolled to a stop and Jack looked over at Dee and back at his children.

“That’s all, folks.”

“We’re out of gas?” Cole asked.

“Bone dry.”

Dee set the parking brake.

Jack opened his door, stepped down onto the road. “Come on.”

“Jack.” Dee climbed out and slammed her door. “What are you doing?”

He adjusted the sling which Dee had fashioned out of a spare tee-shirt for his left arm, said, “I’m going to walk up this road until I find something to help us or until I can’t walk anymore. You coming?”

“There’s not going to be anything up this road, Jack. We’re in the middle of a fucking wilderness.”

“Should we just lay down in the road right here then? Wait to die? Or maybe I should get the Glock and put us all—”

“Don’t you ever—”

“Hey, guys?” Naomi got out and walked around to the front of the Rover and stood between her parents. “Look.”

She pointed toward the side of the mountain, perhaps fifty feet up from where they’d stopped, at an overgrown, one-lane road that climbed into the trees.

Jack said, “It’s probably just some old wagon trail. There used to be mining around here I think.”

“You don’t see it.”

“See what?”

“There’s a mailbox.”

The mailbox was black and unmarked, and the Colcloughs walked past it up the narrow road into the trees. Jack was winded before the first hairpin turn, but keeping far enough ahead of Dee and the kids that he could gasp for air in private.

At four-thirty in the afternoon, he stopped at an overlook—dizzy, heartbeat rattling his entire body, pounding through his left shoulder. He collapsed breathless on the rock, still sucking down gulps of air when the rest of his family arrived.

“This is too much for you,” Dee said, out of breath herself.

They could see a slice of the road several hundred feet below where it briefly emerged from the forest. A square-topped dome of a mountain loomed ten miles away, the summit dusted with snow. Even bigger peaks beyond.

Jack struggled to his feet and went on.

The road wound through an aspen grove that was peaking—pale yellows and deep yellows and the occasional orange—and when the wind blew through the trees, the leaves fluttered like weightless coins.

The sun was falling through the western sky. Already a cool edge to the air in advance of another clear and freezing night. They hadn’t brought their sleeping bags from the car. Hadn’t brought water. Nothing but the shotgun and the Glock and it occurred to Jack that they might very well be sleeping under the stars on the side of this mountain tonight.

Several switchbacks later, the road curved and Jack walked out of the aspen into a meadow.

He stopped.

Took the Glock out of his waistband and tugged back the slide.

Dee gasped.

Cole said, “What, Mama?”

Jack turned around and shushed them and led them back into the woods.

“Is anyone there?” Dee whispered.

“I couldn’t tell. Let me go check things out.”

“I should go, Jack. You’re too weak.”

“Don’t move from this spot, any of you, until I come back.”

He jogged into the meadow. You could see the desert in the west, the sun bleeding out across it and the distant gray thread of Highway 191. It was getting cold. He slowed to a walk, his shoulder pulsing again. The wind had died away and the trees stood motionless. Somewhere, the murmur of a stream.

A covered porch ran the length of it, loaded with firewood. Solar panels clung to the steep pitch of the roof. Dormers on the second floor. A chimney rising up through the center. The windows were dark, reflecting the sunset off the glass so he couldn’t see inside, even as he walked up the steps.

The wooden porch bowed and creaked under his weight. He leaned in toward a window, touched his nose to the glass, framed his face in his hands to block the natural light.

Darkness inside. The shape of furniture. High ceilings. No movement.

He tried the front door. Locked. Turned away, shielded his eyes, and swung the Glock through the window.

Dee shouted something from the woods.

“I’m okay,” he yelled. “Just breaking in.”

He straddled the windowframe and stepped down into the cabin. Through the skylight above the entrance, a column of late sun slanted through the glass and struck the stone of the freestanding fireplace with a medallion of orange light. It didn’t smell like anyone had been here in some time. The mustiness of infrequent habitation.

From what he could see in the fading light, the floorplan was spacious and open. A staircase corkscrewed up to the second level where the banistered hallway and three open doors were visible from Jack’s vantage.

He moved across the hardwood floor toward the kitchen.

A deep sink and granite countertops lined the back wall of windows which looked out over the deck into the brilliant aspen.

He walked over to the pantry, pulled open the door.

Jack led Dee and the kids up the front porch steps and into the cabin.

“There’s food here, Jack?”

“Just come on.”

The last trickle of daylight was just sufficient to illuminate the kitchen, where Jack had thrown open every cabinet so they could see the treasure he’d found.

Dee sat down and put her head between her knees and wept.

They spread out on the floor as the world went black out the kitchen windows, each with their own cold can and sharing a big bag of sourdough pretzels torn open and spilled across the floor beside a sixer of warm Sierra Mist.

“Oh my God, this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” Naomi said, halfway through her clam chowder. Grunts of agreement all around—Jack had gone for the chili, Dee the beef vegetable soup, Cole the Chef Boyardee cheese ravioli.

A half hour later, Naomi slept on a leather couch near the fireplace while Jack covered her with two quilts he’d found in a game closet. He went up the spiral staircase, holding one of the kerosene lamps they’d taken from the coffee table downstairs, Dee in tow, carrying Cole. Into the first bedroom. Jack pulled back the quilt, blanket, sheet, and Dee laid their son on the mattress and kissed his forehead and covered him back up.

“It’ll get cold in here tonight,” she said.

“Not as cold as last night.”

“If he wakes up and no one’s here, he’s going to be scared.”

“You think so? After these last few days? He’s done in, Dee. He won’t wake for hours.”

They lay in bed downstairs in the dark under a pile of blankets. Somewhere, the tick of a second hand. Naomi’s deep respirations in the living room. No other sound.

“Do you think we’re safe here?” Dee whispered.

“Safer than starving and freezing to death on the side of a mountain.”

“But long-term, I mean.”

“I don’t know yet. I can’t think about it right now. I have nothing left.”

Dee snuggled up to him and stretched a leg across his, her skin cool and like fine-grit sandpaper. She ran her fingers through the hair on his chest. First time in months she’d put her hands on him, and it felt, in the best kind of way, like a stranger touching him.